1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a card with a built-in electronic part serving as an IC card, and also relates to a card with a built-in electronic part manufactured by the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
A method of manufacturing a card with a built-in electronic part, is known in which a substrate having an electronic part mounted thereon is set in a recess previously formed in a plastic block, and the top and bottom of the plastic block are covered with a sheet.
An alternative method of manufacturing a card of a same type is known in which an electronic part is sandwiched between a top sheet and a bottom sheet, and resin is supplied into a gap between the sheets and then cured.
In the first method, the recess is made by molding or cutting the plastic block. Due to the molding or cutting, much cost and many hours are required to form the card with a built-in electronic part. In particular, when the recess is formed by cutting, disadvantageously large dimensional tolerance results.
In the latter method, the shrinkage on curing differs between portions according to whether an electronic part is present or not. As a result, the card will have a bumpy surface. Due to the bumpy surface, images such as a human face and letters cannot be printed thereon by photographic printing, because the thermal head used in the printing cannot be evenly contacted with the entire card surface.